


The Art of Overthinking

by TrinesRUs



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:12:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrinesRUs/pseuds/TrinesRUs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donatello has trouble just not-thinking. It's near impossible for him. Sometimes, that really sucks.</p>
<p>(Uses Donnie's sketching in Plan 10 as a frame but is mostly a contemplation of one part of his character.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Overthinking

            Donatello’s pencil flies furiously over the pad before him. Lines stretch and curl around the paper like grasping frantic for a hold before they fall into nothingness.

            (Of course, the very idea that pencil sketches could be grasping is unreasonable. The very most they could do is depict an _image_ of grasping, but even that is only representation and not an actual action. Accuracy, unfortunately, often falls to the wayside when it comes to artistic phrasing.)

            This feverish pace is just how he works. It’s almost how he _has_ to work. His brain doesn’t shut off easily. He thinks in a near-constant barrage of figures, statistics, patterns, Latin names, wires, circuitry, and trivia on innumerable subjects. It’s almost like having gnats in his brain (another ridiculous notion, from the fact that the type of gnat is unspecified—Mycetophilidae? Anisopodidae? Sciaridae? Culicidae?—to the possibility of even one managing to enter his skull). His brain gets crowded to the point of feeling fuzzy, so full of thoughts that he can’t see a singular concept clearly. Drawing and writing are the only consistent ways to get the gnats out.

            Not even working on his machines is as reliable; there are too many factors. When he is building something new, very little of the buzzing dissipates unless he has first done the initial release of sketching out his plans. If he has his plan on paper or the computer, then building becomes a way of shaking the straggling insects out. Once matters turn to testing, tweaking, and repairing machines, though, it’s more like a steady stream of gnats flying in and out of his head, just enough at a time to avoid being irritating.

            In fact, that’s one of the many things he finds enjoyable about his technological ventures. His brain’s buzzing is still there, but it becomes more of a soothing hum than the truly horrid foggy, cluttered, energetic mess of uncontrollable thoughts that his head can turn into at times.

            Most activities are full of their own influx and outflow of metaphorical gnats. Training is one, but sometimes the pests swarm too much and not enough of them set off on their own, like his strategizing is too tempting a feast to leave.

            (Where is all this absurd imagery coming from? Donatello has never been a completely logical, detached turtle, but he’s never been this much of a poet, either. Even when he was consuming the likes of Elizabeth Bradfield, Leigh Kotsilidis, Mary Alexandra Agner, and James Clerk Maxwell with little pause except to dismantle each line and examine it, he never once was tempted to emulate their technique.)

            Which isn’t to say that fighting is never a release. In an actual battle rather than sparring or simulations, he actually finds it much easier to clear his brain. The ideas still fly rapidly, but he can—and often has to—put them to use far sooner. Even then, there is still the chance of little, beating thought-wings tickling and fogging him, especially in the most high-stress situations.

            Television, games, and comics are never a full solution, either. He still finds himself critically observing them, studying them, picking apart the tropes that make them function as they do. Sometimes, he isn’t finished processing all his thoughts on one scene or level before the next begins.

            Experience has taught him that he shouldn’t even attempt to prepare food, but sometimes he has to wonder: activity sometimes jogs him into clearing his mind enough to function without pain. It’s a shame that _eating_ food only provides the sugar his brain requires to keep the whir of thoughts going at its centrifuge-like pace.

            And being with April…Oh, sweet, merciful hadron colliders, being with April…

            Being with April is like a fresh spray of bug repellent. Or—ah, that is, she clears the gnats away! She soothes his mind, clearing it of thought. Or, at least enough of thought that he doesn’t get any headaches. (Is any of this complimentary? He means it to be, but it doesn’t sound like it. This is why he doesn’t do poetry.)

            It’s like that at first, at least. One day, instead of slowly sliding back to the hum of rapid-fire thoughts, the gnats start up the moment she leaves. Time passes, and then another day comes when they start up the moment her attention is away from him. Somewhere down the line, they barely even quiet when she talks to him.

            Not completely true; he stops thinking in circuitry and binary and HTML when she’s around, still, but new thought-gnats come to gnaw on his mind. Thoughts about April, how pretty she is. Thoughts about how to spend time with her. Thoughts about how to woo her. Thoughts that linger with him when she leaves, sucking up the space he needs to think about battle and computers and watching out for his brothers.

            That’s why he made the flowchart. The ideas written and drawn there were already in his mind, hovering and buzzing just beyond his ears. They were always going to be with him, one way or another. He just needed those pesky gnats out to make room for the ones that would inevitably fly in to take their place.

            (Ludicrous, ludicrous, _ludicrous_ imagery, but it’s what he has to work with.)

            But being away from April when she gets mad at him and his brothers doesn’t suddenly cure his metaphorical pest problem. In fact, it only makes it worse. The hum gets more insistent, the fog on his thoughts gets worse. He can hardly think of anything but, ‘ _What is April doing without us? What could happen if she got in any danger? Is she keeping up with her training? How, when she doesn’t even visit Splinter? How could I keep her safe if she doesn’t want to see me? Where could her father be? What I could do to make things right? How…?_ ’

            And then Casey Jones enters the equation. He almost literally does, because almost everything is an equation to Donnie. Forget gnats; his mind is like a sheet of paper ever becoming more pencil-heavy with numbers, writing crammed into every space available until the jumbled sprawl no longer makes any sense to anyone but him. (Maybe that’s why writing and drawing are so effective: they give him a clean sheet to work with.)

            Casey is the spanner in the machine that grinds things to a halt for the first moment he enters Donatello’s awareness. Unlike meeting April, though, it’s not a soothing release. It’s a flash of sharp, blinding pain.

            And then the thoughts come zipping right back in, lighting his neurotransmitters on fire. It’s chaotic and disorienting, and he can’t shut himself down. He barely registers his limbs, even as they act as routine, for the pounding waves of thought after heartbroken thought.

            Treating Casey like a rival brings a strange relief in the absolute focus it provides, but accepting him as a friend makes things weirdly worse. It’s the conflict. His complicated mind has too much trouble balancing Casey the Hypocritical-Seducer-Ruffian and all the scenarios for one-upping him and _is he **really** pinching **his** precious Princess’s butt!?_ with Casey the Heroic-Friend and how to more effectively work alongside him.

            At least getting April’s friendship back and saving her dad alleviates some of the guilt and warring within him, but the problems never go away. He has that ever-pummeling need to learn, create, work, improve…

            And now the Kraang are on the move again, and he has to craft something big. Something powerful. Something better than he has ever even _envisioned_ before.

            The last few lines of his pencil grace his paper. Finally drained of enough humming, spinning ideas that he can afford to feel enthusiastic, he laughs and announces, “I’ve got it!”


End file.
